Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Invite your undergrad and grad students to the summer SNL Writing/Incomplete Boot Camp on Saturday, August 1st from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Loop! Walk-ins are welcome, but students may also register by emailing snlevents@depaul.edu. Click on the image below for more information.

Students should bring a flash drive, their copy of the incomplete contract if needed, and all prior assignment preparation—including research material, assignment instructions, and assignment writing format (APA/MLA).

Monday, July 6, 2015

The Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello prayed that “Peace is
only found in yes,” (qtd. in Manney 108) but these days it can be so much
easier to say no; as in, “No I won’t consider thinking about this from another
perspective.” “No, I’d rather watch CSI Miami/LA/Chicago/St. Louis/Naperville
(you get the picture) than revise my paper for your class.” “No, I just don’t
see how I can further develop this topic.”

Sound familiar? Students are great at saying no. But if
you’ve read Tina Fey’s Bossypants,
you know that she claims that the rules of improvisation will “change your life
and reduce belly fat” (more so the former than the latter). The first of these
rules is to agree. Say yes. The second rule is to “add something of your own”
(84).

Saying yes starts with thinking yes. And while I’m not
suggesting that Yes, And will change
your life, I do think that it can change the way adult students think about the
writing and thinking that they do during their college career.

Picturing
yourself there, you might hear yourself think, “I don’t know what to do with a gorilla … how does a gorilla fit in
this scene … will this ever work as an idea?” To deal with this
doubt, you might get a short laugh by saying out loud, “That’s not a gorilla …
that’s her husband.”

The
thing is, now you’re starting over. You’ve lost the trust of the person you’re
on stage with, because you said “no” to them. The audience feels fooled,
because they heard that one thing and started to picture it, then had it
changed on them. Nobody is comfortable. Let’s try it again.

“What
a great party. Hey, there’s a gorilla.”

“Yeah,
and he’s making some killer Manhattans.”

Yes,
there is a gorilla. And he’s putting those opposable thumbs to work as a
mixologist. Your mind, and perhaps the audience’s mind, is starting to go places.
You might start picturing the gorilla is wearing cuffs and a collar while
working the shaker. Why is there a gorilla? Are there more animals working this
party? Will the host enter and fill in more of this picture about the unusual
catering? These possibilities have opened up because you said, “Yes, And”…

Peter Elbow said that the “freewriting muscle” not only brought one to
a “more intense state of perception” but also to a heighted awareness of
“language production” (43). Tina Fey (had she become a writing theorist rather
than a comedy writer) might add to this that getting writers and thinkers
practicing the idea of Yes, And can
help them think more critically and develop ideas and papers more fully.
Patricia Ryan Madson writes in Improv
Wisdom that “saying yes gets us into heaven but also into trouble” (27).

Ryan Madson teaches theater, but her book is written for
anyone who wants to think about how the rules of improvisation can apply to
their own life. She bases much of her thinking on the ideas of Keith Johnstone,
a revolutionary educator and theater teacher who wrote Impro and Impro for
Storytellers, awesome texts for any educator looking to glean more thought
about storytelling out of their students. Impro
for Storytellers in particular is full of improv exercises that can help
students practice answering the question, “What comes next?” Here is one
exercise from Johnstone and one from Ryan Madson that instructors of any
subject can adapt to their purpose:

·Yes, But:
Two students sit in chairs opposite one another. Student 1 asks questions;
Student 2 provides answers. Student 2 must answer “Yes, but…” to each of
Student 1’s questions. For the first round of questions, Student 2 should pause
and think before answering. For the second round of questions, Student 2 should
answer without thinking. Repeat the exercise, using “Yes, and” instead.

When students are forced to answer “Yes, but” they are
practicing what Johnstone and Ryan Madson call “blocking.” Blocking happens in
the example above when the scene partner says, “That’s not a gorilla…that’s her
husband.” This exercise first forces students into these dead ends, and then,
by changing the “but” to an “and,” lets students practice continuing on with
the story, thought, experience. Moreover, they don’t think before answering
because Johnstone believes that students are less likely to block when they do
not think about what comes next, but let it happen unconsciously.

·The
Proverb Game: Invent a new proverb by speaking it one word at a time. This
works best when students are sitting in a circle. The first volunteer begins
with any word. Go around the circle, each student filling in the next logical word
that comes to them. When the proverb comes to its natural close, all
participants should press their fingers together and chant “Yes, yes, yes,
yes.”

Ryan Madson believes that blocking primarily happens because
we need control. Control of our lives, control of our stories, control of what
comes next. This game helps participants to practice giving up control. (Try it
as a warm-up exercise before freewriting).

Getting students to play with the idea of Yes, And may not help them reduce belly
fat, but it may invite them to enter into more complex ideas and details than
they might have investigated on their own. On second thought, maybe it will
change their lives. It’s worth a try!